Former Sherwin-Williams employee Tony Piloseno was doing the same stateside – mixing paint on TikTok from his place of employment in Athens, Ohio – to the delight of about 1.3 million followers who were getting both brand awareness and an interest in the science behind how color is folded into a can of paint.

Piloseno commented that he loved his job and he loved mixing paint, and he loved sharing it with is followers. He even bought the paint he used. As a business student at a local college, he got some help working up a plan to show the Sherwin-Williams marketing department how this type of social media exposure could help bring brand awareness and a new interest in paint to a younger generation. After several months of silence, the company replied that it wasn’t interested in pursuing it. 

It's in the Mix

Piloseno continued his project and eventually ran a video where he put blueberries into some white paint to see if it would create blue paint – prompting a complaint from a customer and a firing by the SW district manager, who said that among other infractions Tony was in violation of several “gross misconduct policies,” including actions that “seriously embarrasses the Company or its products.”

News of the firing went viral, and some people criticized Sherwin-Williams on Twitter (where it was a top trending topic), the company’s Facebook page, and other social media for terminating an enthusiastic employee who not only loved mixing paint but was introducing over a million people to the brand.

The story has received international coverage on many news sites., while others suggested that other paint companies snap him up and take advantage of his passion for paint tinting and marketing. Sherwin-Williams responded with a statement Piloseno was fired for “multiple company policy violations.”

Piloseno, who was at this point filming videos in a friend’s basement, was offered jobs by companies such as PPG and Benjamin Moore, but he recently accepted a positiong with Florida Paints, a small family-owned company based in Orlando. The company Don Strube owner called his videos “mesmerizing” and agreed to invest in Tony’s personal influencer brand.